


Thy Kingdom Come

by MMXIII



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Childhood, Gore, Mind Palace, Murder, Sherlock - Freeform, TS Eliot, The Waste Land, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-23 19:46:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1577318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMXIII/pseuds/MMXIII
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The square folds out around you like acetate origami, pulling apart violently at artificial corners. You keep it folded down, this place, but it’s always…pressing</p><p>Into the mind palace of the mad man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thy Kingdom Come

**Author's Note:**

> This is an experiment of sorts - I've never read anything (which isn't to say it isn't there!) about Jim's mind palace [which he must have bc everything's a competition right?], so I wanted to give it a try.
> 
> The chapter titles are taken from TS Eliot's The Waste Land (if only my lecturers knew XD)
> 
> Also, I may make alterations randomly because I like to do things like that... ^^
> 
> Comments would marvellous :)
> 
> (Thanks!)

_When an acquired state has become accustomed to living in freedom under its own laws, there are three ways of securing it. The first is to destroy it; the second, to move there oneself; the third, to let it live with its own laws, exacting a tribute and creating within it a regime of a_ _selected few who will keep it friendly towards you._

– Niccolò Machiavelli, **_The Prince_**

 

* * *

 

The square folds out around you like acetate origami, pulling apart violently at artificial corners. You keep it folded down, this _place_ , but it’s always… _pressing_. Burning a little behind your eyes. Itching just inside your ears, _too deep to reach with your little fingers_

**[get it out]**

You shake your head.

The surrounding buildings form a closed quad behind your eyelids. Spires rising up sharply to scratch a bleach-white sky like a rows of teeth. It both vast and profoundly claustrophobic; you see everything, and it _haunts_ you. Little numbers tick ticking away. _Little letters on a cuff on a coat on a collar, cup, cufflink_ , **[stop]**

You hear nothing. But the air is, oily, still.

The square itself is a car park. Cracked, inglorious. Your soles rasp over council tarmac split apart by nettles and strewn with loose aluminium ring pulls. Thick shards of brown bottle-glass crunch underfoot as ribbons of filth-stiffened plastic bags lie flayed like viscera, caught in iron drains. There is a shopping trolley with rusted spindly wire ribs, newspaper flesh hanging damply from the carcass flickering softly in a breeze you _know_ isn’t there. But it isn’t about what is _there_ is it;

_What can we make, what can we find, what can we break, infer, conflate, imply_

Oh those lovely little broadsheet sagas

*

In the centre, flanked by backgammon parking lines, where one might envision the placement of a grandiose renaissance fountain, or a tight, clipped circle of  _Oxbridge_  lawn, is a mangled, overturned car.

Curls of smoke roll softly away from charred upholstery; you hear the faint whirring sound the back left wheel spinning needlessly in mid-air before you see it. Perhaps you see a blackened forearm burned into the dirt.

Perhaps you simply remember it.

And still.

Those _insufferable_ little white characters flicker amid the splintered bones of the strangled chassis. _Indelible_

Music plays softly in the background, painting the day.

_-cause maybe_

_You’re gonna be the one that s-_

**[make it stop]**

 

You crack your neck impatiently; _irrelevance_ bores you.

 

That’s the trouble here. Everything echoes.

*

Three elegant stone steps rise from the buckled tarmac to a central gaping doorway. There is no actual door, only an incongruously cheap pine doorframe set into the elaborate stonework. Marked inside on the wood are a series of dark, graphite-filled depressions labelled precisely with assorted numbers. Presumably ages. Perhaps heights. You’ve forgotten.

You touch your left hand to the side of the frame in passing.

_Forgive me father I-_

This is _your_ wretched cathedral of plate-glass and French gothic.

_Victorian brick, and flat-pack ignobility_

_*_

The square disappears behind you though your shoes are a little grit-scratched.

The narrow hall that follows is flagged with a chessboard of black and white marble, lined, like  _Versailles_ , with warped, gilded mirrors that leave your looking-glass counter-part ill-defined and jagged. Strange shapes flicker in the notoriety of your peripheral vision.

Numerous doors plead with you as you walk past. Little red threads running along the walls, the ceiling, the floor. _If you were to reach out and-_

One doorway is barred only by a rotting picket fence that now comes up to your waist. Enclosed beyond it, an overgrown garden containing a cat and a fox, both dead, bloated and a little…  _reconstituted_.

**[leave it]**

 

Something is scratching from behind another door. Like an animal, but too high up. You slide past as the door handle rattles alarmingly. **[STAY]**

Another belongs to a plywood cubicle and bears a boyish handwritten sign,  _keep out_. The floor is wet, the water almost undetectable against the staccato monochrome of the floor. It is only after your trousers have begun to cling wetly to your ankles that your tongue flicks out to taste the rising smell of chlorine. Something like a smile catches briefly in the translucent needles of your teeth; somewhere someone is sobbing.

Other doorways yield tiled walls and steel frame beds; 70s wallpaper covered in brown blood; charred solid oak panelling, Victorian, no _Edwardian_ **[smirk];** a classroom strewn with upturned desks, and a chair 3 floors down in the car park, surrounded by flakes of glass.

_After all this time, after all-_

The last door is black, glossy, labelled with 4 brass characters. You stop, blink slowly. A blue light flashes behind it, licking the tiny gap just above the floor and spilling into the corridor.

Something like _hunger_ scrapes against the vertebrae of your spine.

It is _so_ hard to leave it. _Come play_ , it says, in tremulous violin licks;

 _I’ll race you_.

_Did you see that?_

_Look at me!_

_Is that it?_

_Faster, **higher**._

 

**[not _now_ , I’m _BUSY_ ]**

 

 

 

 

Your fingers twitch.

You sigh in something like agitation. _Excitation. Infatuation._

 _Later_ , you think **[yes]** _later_

*

The end of the corridor manifests as another doorway mounted above several steeps. You ascend without breaking stride.

 

 

 

The water that recoils in your wake is tinged ever-so-slightly _pink_.

 

 

 


End file.
